10 Ways to Generate More Leads With Website Chat
How do you generate more leads for your business?
This is the question that has been the catalyst for thousands of lead generation solutions and strategies. It’s also one of the main business concerns our customers try to address with Userlike.
And for good reason: not only is website chat a great customer service channel with its helpfulness and clarity, but it can also take your lead generation to a new level.
Today I’ll cover why that is, as well as 10 specific features of website chat that are especially relevant to lead generation.
Why website chat is so powerful for lead generation
Website chat lets you generate leads naturally from chat conversations. It’s a low investment way for your site visitors to ask questions, get answers and for you to provide them all the help they need.
It also matches the behavior of the modern consumer . They want quick answers to their questions, but they don’t want to go through too many steps (or wait in a line) to get them. And it’s often these tiny unanswered questions that prevent site visitors from becoming leads. Website chat is fast, precise and versatile - pretty much the opposite of so many other channels.
There are a host of other reasons website chat is great for lead generation, as well.
Guide your customers throughout their entire website experience. Live chat is the only channel that is both on-site and real time. This makes it perfect for nurturing your website leads at any stage of the buyer’s journey. From welcoming a new site visitor to answering last minute questions before a purchase, website chat is there to guide and assist people on your website.
Save more money compared to other channels. A live chat session is up to 50% cheaper than a phone call and usually much faster. Plus, a chat agent can have multiple conversations at the same time. This makes website chat a cheap and efficient way to generate leads.
Give the people what they want. Your customers love website chat, plain and simple. In fact, the channel has customer satisfaction rates of over 90% , and it’s on the rise. No surprise here - it’s fast, free and more convenient than waiting in a phone queue.
There’s no denying it: when it comes to generating and nurturing new leads for your business, website chat is undeniably powerful. It’s also convenient, inexpensive and exactly what your website visitors are already asking for.
But it doesn’t stop there. There are also specific features that add even more sales power to your chat support.
Let’s check out 10 of them.
10 website chat features perfectly suited for lead generation
1
Registration form
This is a registration form that is shown to unidentified visitors before a conversation even starts. Such a form makes it easy to pursue these leads later on in case they become highly qualified for your product. You already have their contact information and can, for example, forward them directly to your sales team.
This is what we do at Userlike. An active registration form is shown the first time somebody wants to chat with our support team. Because this form only takes a few seconds to fill out, it doesn’t pose an inconvenience to potential leads that want to chat with us.
This information that we gather is essential for follow-up later on. Lead nurturing is much simpler and filtering out low quality contacts down the line is both quick and easy.
2
Customer contact area
It’s the companies that understand their customers best that will be most successful. Understanding is how you build connection. Connection is how you build compassion. And compassion is how you earn the business of people that fall in love with your company.
One of the quickest ways to get to that point is by setting up informative lead profiles. This makes important information regarding your leads easily accessible and ensures that conversation you have with them is helpful and relevant.
This is the function of Userlike’s customer contact areas. These are profiles of the people you chat with on your website that you can fill with side information, including the city your lead is from, their phone number, or anything else that’s important to remember while interacting with them. Plus, with additional information on each individual profile like URLs they have already visited, it’s easy to provide the helpful and highly-targeted assistance your leads need.
In addition, by clicking on the "start new conversation" button, reengagement with past contacts is straightforward. Assuming their profile contains an email address, they will receive an email notification for any new messages you send them. This is particularly useful for sending helpful information to a contact you already have an established relationship with.
For example, you might offer them more information or a special deal on a product they previously showed interest in. This helpfulness builds your relationship with potential customers even quicker.
3
Widget router
Your site visitors are varied, and will inevitably want different things from you. Some will be browsing your store, while others will be more interested in reading your content. Some might be on a desktop, while others will be surfing your site on their smartphone.
To maximize your chances of lead generation, the approach you use to chat with different site visitors can (and should) also be varied. This ensures that you are interacting with each individual the way they want and providing customized support.
In Userlike this is easily done with widget routers. You can set up rules that select different chat behavior depending on the information you have about your site visitor, as well as decide on which page they should take place. This can include everything from changing the chat language for an international visitor to offering a proactive invite to someone checking out an expensive and complex product.
By providing a website experience just as unique as the people you serve, our widget routers build up your relationship with leads faster than a static experience ever could.
4
Chatbot funnels
A chatbot funnel is essentially a predefined conversation via chatbot that is dependent on the answers a site visitor gives to the bot.
For example, let’s say you are talking to a chatbot on a real estate agency's homepage and looking for a new house in your neighborhood. A chatbot funnel is the combination of paths you might take when pursuing this information. Before you ever have contact with a real life agent, this chatbot funnel can give you commonly asked for information and adapt the questions it asks to your answers.
Sound effective? That’s because it is. Assuming you are following best practices , a chatbot funnel ensures that you reach your customers wherever and whenever they are on your website. It’s this constant contact that quickly builds trust among site visitors.
With Userlike’s chatbot language , setting up a chatbot funnel is easy. Plus, your Userlike chatbot can be as simple or as complicated as you need it to be. You can, for example, pair your site visitor with a funnel that matches whichever page they are on. This custom funnel approach is more likely to fit their behavior precisely and convert them into a lead.
5
Proactive chat
This feature lets you proactively reach out to web visitors who may have questions. The power behind proactive chat is that you can’t always rely on site visitors that have a question about your product to contact you. They might be too busy, too lazy or simply forget. Proactive chat makes missed opportunities due to doubt a thing of the past.
It’s also especially useful for lead generation because it shows your site visitors that you have their back. By anticipating problems and questions they often face and bringing them out into the open, you make their experience less stressful and more valuable.
When paired with intuitive timing (easily done with Userlike), proactive chat is even more powerful. For example, you might look at the average time spent on a page to better understand your visitors’ behavior. Once you figure this out, you could set the proactive invite to open 10-20 seconds after the average page visit duration. This ensures you are showing your chat option to only the most interested candidates – or to those who might be having an issue.
6
Long-term conversations
The majority of your leads aren’t going to fall in love with your business after your first conversation with them. Selling takes time and a certain level of relationship building.
This is what long-term conversations are made for. Website visitors can jump back into past conversations, and with all their information conveniently accessible to the operator, finding solutions to their problems is fast and easy. Long-term conversations allow for quicker and deeper relationships, and your customers avoid the frustrating experience of repeated explanation that so many channels are known for. Still, most other website chat options don’t provide you this option, as your conversation is over as soon as you close the chat.
Thankfully, Userlike does. Because contacts’ information is always there, your operators have access to the context of past conversations and can provide immediate and customized help. This helps you better nurture your leads as you are able to pick things up right where they left off.
Plus, not only are chats ongoing, but they can be asynchronous. This means that long-term conversations function exactly the same as modern messaging: conversations can be live, but also continue over the span of days (or years). Just think of the way you message your friends and family on apps like WhatsApp!
Say goodbye to shallow, irregular lead interactions...and hello to long-term customer relationships.
7
Audio call
Chat is perfect for first contact with site visitors. It’s quick, easy and most importantly, low barrier for your visitor. It’s also much cheaper than phone service.
But once contact has been established and it’s clear that you’re talking to an interested customer? That’s when escalating to a phone call might make sense, especially with topics that are complex.
This is easy with Userlike audio calls . From the type input actions bar in your Message Center, simply select the phone icon. This does not start a call with your contact directly, but it sends them an invitation for one. Your contact can then decide to accept or reject the call.
Audio calls make your interaction with the visitor more personal. They are also particularly excellent at capturing warm leads. These are site visitors that are already interested in what you have to offer and just need a little extra push to become a lead. Audio calls provide this push.
Note that only operators, not contacts, can initiate a call. Calls are highly intrusive, and unlike chats, you cannot handle more than one call at a time. That's why the decision to start a call should lie with the operator, not the contact.
8
On-page guidance
Explaining things over chat can be cumbersome, especially if the action your visitor needs to take has multiple steps. That’s what makes on-page guidance so useful. With this feature, you take the customer by the hand and guide them to the right page of your website. This solves their problem quickly and avoids any unnecessary frustration.
Plus, when combined with Userlike’s Javascript API, on-page guidance is even more powerful. Maybe you see that the customer has a certain item in their basket, and you know that they are likely interested in another complementary product. With Userlike, you can simply take them to the right page to pique their interest.
How’s that for an upsell?
9
Live translation
We all know the difficulties that language barriers create. Miscommunication and misinterpretation are just some of the problems you can look forward to when you don’t speak the same language as your prospects.
And within the context of lead generation? The gap is even more problematic. Your potential leads get confused, frustrated with the buying process, or even worse, don’t trust your business to follow through on what you are promising.
Userlike’s live translation fixes this problem. With this feature, your chat messages are translated into one of 24 languages at your disposal. Messages from your contact, meanwhile, are translated into the language set in your operator profile.
Live translation is also cheaper than hiring human agents that speak all the languages of your customers. This means you get to help more people for less money. That said, it’s always advisable to let the customers know that you’re using a translation app in case of any misunderstanding.
Check out our video about Userlike’s Message Center for more information.
10
Operator skills
Customers are happiest when they are instantly connected to the support representative best qualified to answer their question. Just think about your own buying experience. How great is it to talk to someone who is an obvious product expert ? Somebody so knowledgeable in their field that they can answer any question you have and give you customized advice perfectly suited to your situation?
This quickly provides value to your visitor and prevents frustrating communication gaps.
With Userlike’s operator skills, it’s possible to pair the product experts on your team with the people most likely to benefit from their knowledge. If you own a music shop, for example, a lead on your guitar page could easily be guided to someone who knows a lot about guitars.
As a buyer, we're often left with so many options to choose from. Having a guide, someone who knows everything about the product area, and who can tailor that knowledge to what is important to you, is invaluable. With Userlike, that’s exactly what you give to your customers.
Get all this and more with Userlike
If you want to test out these features for your own lead generation , Userlike offers all of them and more.
In fact, we’ve already helped thousands of businesses with their lead generation, including companies like Mercedes and Allianz. Lead generation is simply easier, quicker and more enjoyable for your customers when you use website chat.
Sign up for a free Userlike trial today and experience the difference yourself!
